Cows spawn in herds of 4 on top of opaque blocks with at least 2 blocks of space above them, at a light level of 9 or higher. They mostly spawn in herds while the world is first generating; although if there are no passive mobs in loaded chunks, they can spawn after world generation in normal spawning cycles.

If cows are given wheat, their love mode will be triggered, and they will pair off to create calves, which may grant the player a small amount of experience. The parent cows will then have a cooldown of 5 minutes before they can breed again.

The growth of baby cows can be slowly accelerated using wheat. Each use takes 10% off the remaining time to grow up.

Cows tend to walk around slowly and aimlessly, mooing and breathing occasionally. They will avoid walking off cliffs high enough to cause fall damage. Like other passive mobs, they will flee around for a few seconds if you hit them.

A cow will follow the player if they are holding wheat, but will stop if the player travels too far away (8 blocks).

Notch stated in a tweet that all “breedable” peaceful mobs displayed traits of both genders and could breed with any other individual of their species. This applies to cows, since they have horns and give milk (although, in some species, female cows also have horns)

In other languages

Content is available under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 unless otherwise noted.Minecraft content and materials are trademarks and copyrights of Mojang and its licensors. All rights reserved.
This site is a part of Curse, Inc. and is not affiliated with Mojang.